A Woman in the Crossfire

July 9, 2012
Amid the horrific news about Syrian dissidents, mass killings, and government claims of terrorists, this unique document, written in the first months of the uprising, is a chronicle both of objective events and the visceral and psychic responses of an impassioned activist and artist. Yazbek, a writer, documentarian, and member of the ruling Alawite clan, had already sacrificed her privileged position through provocative acts even before the revolution began on March 15, 2011. The diaries, which begin on March 25, document her experience through the early months of the uprising as she participates in and observes the first demonstrations, goes into hiding in an apartment in downtown Damascus, defies her interrogators and witnesses torture in a secret prison, interviews activists, soldiers, and eyewitnesses to slaughter, and prepares to leave Syria to protect her daughter and “communicate to the world what’s happening here.” The book weaves journalistic reporting with intimate, poetic musings on an appalling reality. As she writes: “Death is a mobile creature that now walks on two legs.... I am the crime of treason against my society and my sect, but I am no longer afraid.” Agent: Jasmina Jraissati, Raya Agency, France.

May 1, 2012
Haunting memoir of an unwanted season in the hellish combat of civil war. Syrian writer and filmmaker Yazbek, a member of the literary movement called the Beirut39, will be new to most readers outside the Middle East. Both beautifully written--sometimes incongruously so, given the subject matter--and relentless, her narrative opens with the heady days of the Arab Spring, when the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt were giving way to popular uprisings and the edifice of Syria's security state was being shaken by an awakened people. "They could not and would not believe that this army of slaves, whom they called 'insects' or 'rats, ' could ever rise up against them," writes the Syrian-German novelist Rafik Schami in his foreword of the stunningly corrupt Assad regime. But on March 15 of last year, the "slaves" did revolt. The regime hit back hard, spraying crowds of unarmed, peaceful demonstrators with bullets. As Yazbek writes, almost by way of prelude to this terrible chronicle of events experienced firsthand, "Death is no longer a question. Death is a window we open up to our questions." Death is also a constant, grim companion in these pages; it drew close as undercover agents interrogated and harassed Yazbek, receding as, eventually, she fled the country. The images she paints are indelible, pictures of "men on their stomachs in handcuffs, humiliated and insulted," and of youngsters defiantly baring their chests to the security police before being gunned down. "Sure, I was panicked," she writes, "but through that panic I learned how to cultivate a dark patch in my heart, a zone that no one can reach, one that remains fixed, where not even death can penetrate." An essential eyewitness account, and with luck an inaugural document in a Syrian literature that is uncensored and unchained.

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November 15, 2012

Yazbek, a young Syrian journalist and novelist, sought to record the events and the spirit of the escalating demonstrations against the autocratic regime of Bashar al-Assad in the months following March 2011. As she portrays the idealism and courage of the demonstrators in the face of increasing repression, she shows how the initial goals of greater freedom and a dignified life evolved into a determination to overthrow the increasingly brutal regime. This book grew out of her diaries--it's not a journalistic analysis or report. Instead it's a poetic and philosophical evocation of her emotions, fears, and anger. She describes the resisters as they face heavily armed government forces, many to be killed and wounded, others to be arrested and tortured. Yazbek herself participated in many demonstrations, questioned soldiers who were armed with powerful weapons and tanks, wept with mothers seeking missing sons, while she herself suffered arrest and beatings. VERDICT A powerful account conveying the idealism and fear that united diverse religious and ethnic groups in Syria to rise against their autocratic government, with the outcome still uncertain.--Elizabeth R. Hayford, formerly with Associated Colls. of the Midwest, Evanston, IL

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